Some years ago, some educators, in an effort to denigrate alternative education proposed various schemes wherein one could receive a “badge” or some other kind o Certificate of Completion of a course offered online by the traditional colleges, sometimes for free. This was the way you could take some alternative education courses yet have the courses be at highly respected universities.
So how did that work out for you??
Do You Really Want a Badge or a Course Completion Certificate? Or do you think an actual Degree would serve you better??
What are people doing with all the worthless badges and course completion certificates leading to nowhere? Traditional institutions continue to screw the public with all kinds of schemes to take your money and spend it on education that leads to nothing. After all, what is the value really of a “badge” or certificate of completion for a couple of courses at a well respected traditional university? No value.
Blue Marble University, a true virtual university, offers doctoral degrees you can use. When you finish any of our doctoral programs, you receive a real degree that is accepted nearly everywhere internationally and in the US. Blue Marble University is a foreign education institution, and though not accredited in the US, every single doctoral degree is deemed equivalent to a doctoral degree from a regionally accredited US college or university!!! How about that!!
The way it works is that our graduates take their academic record from Blue Marble University to any number of foreign education credential evaluators whose job it is to evaluate foreign education for employment in the US. They compare our program to the US doctoral programs and have found in every case so far that our degree is equivalent to those issued in the US. And you can take your Degree and that certificate of equivalency to any employer, other institution, or federal and state government agency.
Our annual tuition for our doctoral programs ranges from $2950 to $3450 depending on the program, with some discounting for annual lump sum advance payment.
And, anyway, the days of free online courses at traditional universities is over.
Here is the article that proves it, stating that MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are dead.
https://iblnews.org/2018/12/03/moocs-are-dead-welcome-mooc-based-degrees/amp/
An excerpt of the article appears follows, as reported by IBL News:
*********
“MOOCs are dead,” claimed edX’s CEO, Anant Agarwal, last month during the private Global Forum conference in Boston. Some partner universities aligned with the goal of openness in education were shocked.
Additionally, the announcement that edX.org will soon (this month) start charging for graded assessments made some uncomfortable.
“MOOC is a philosophy of education; it has never been a business model. We signed up on edX following this principle,” said a member of one participating university.
This new reality goes against that dream. edX, like Coursera, Udacity, and FutureLearn, needs to be either financially sustainable or profitable. Therefore, revenue-generating solutions are required.
A successfully emerged idea is MOOC-based degrees, developed in partnerships between universities and the aforementioned platforms.
The problem is how to split the revenues. Coursera and edX require a 50 percent split, because of the technology and marketing costs. Not all of the institutions are ready to take this deal. They believe that their brands, along with low prices, are powerful enough to make their online degrees successful. Regarding the technology, there are several solutions, including Open edX, which is a community-based, open source software (edX.org uses this code, plus an additional 10% of proprietary software).
With revenue sharing or not, the fact is that these types of online degrees, wrongly called MOOCs, are on the rise. Designed to operate on a larger scale, they feature lower prices than on-campus online equivalents and offer more flexible criteria for admissions. Around 47 online degrees have been announced so far, and many more are planned.
This is the recent history of how these Master’s and Bachelor’s online degrees have unfolded:
• The first program was Georgia Tech’s groundbreaking online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, launched in 2014 on Udacity with support from AT&T. The $6,800 tuition attracted approximately 10,000 students.
• Two years later, the University of Illinois and Coursera started a Master’s program in Business, branded as an iMBA, consisting of six specializations, for $22,000.
• In March 2018, Coursera announced its first fully online Bachelor’s degree, targeting both students who are pursuing their first degree as well as those who already have a Bachelor’s. It was a 3-4 year Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, developed by the University of London. The program costs approximately $13,300 to $23,500, depending on the student’s geographic location.
• In parallel, Coursera reported the development of six new Master’s degrees: a Master of Computer Science from Arizona State University, a Global Master of Public Health from Imperial College London, a Master of Computer Science from the University of Illinois, a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of London, a Master of Applied Data Science from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan. Coursera revealed plans to offer 20 online degrees by 2019, becoming a kind of OPM (Online Program Manager) who helps colleges build online degree programs.
• In August 2018, Georgia Tech announced a new online master’s degree in Cybersecurity for less than $10,000 on edX.org. This OMS Cybersecurity (Online Master of Science in Cybersecurity) will be launched on January 7, 2019, with 250 students and will scale over time. OMS Cybersecurity was Georgia Tech’s third at-scale online degree program. It followed the success of the mentioned 2014 Master of Science in Computer Science, as well as the Online Master of Science in Analytics (OMS Analytics), launched in 2017 on edX with support from AT&T and Accenture.
• In October 2018, the edX organization achieved a milestone on its expansion strategy by announcing the 2019 launch of nine online Master’s degree programs for a “disruptive price” between $10,000 and $23,000. The average Master’s degree ranges between $30,000-$120,000. These programs, in areas such as Data Science, Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Analytics and Supply Chain Management, will be developed by Arizona State University, Curtin University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana University, University of California San Diego, University of Queensland, and the University of Texas at Austin.
****************
Wow, there are some very hefty tuitions in there!!!
Blue Marble University has a top annual tuition charge of $3450/year with no interest payment plan, which can be reduced to $3200 by advance annual lump sum payment. And our degrees are as good as anyone else according to foreign education evaluators.
Blue Marble University… Always Exciting…Always New
Writing the Book on Online Education for Over 10 Years…
And We Know It Well
Blue Marble University
1st Floor
7 King George V Street
Roseau 00152
Commonwealth of Dominica
Blue Marble University Medical School
1st Floor
7 King George V Street
Roseau 00152
Commonwealth of Dominica
Panama College of Cell Science
Azuero Business Center, Suite 758
Avenida Perez Chitre
00395, Panama
Republica de Panama
***********
Blue Marble University 